Apple has announced iOS 8 at WWDC which is now available for download to developers. iOS 8 comes with a huge list of new features for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The release is said to be “huge for developers and massive for everyone else”. Some of the new features in iOS 8 include QuickType, beefed up Messages, interactive notifications, 3rd party keyboard support, iCloud Drive, health, Spotlight and much more. Hit the jump for the detailed iOS 8 features list and what’s new in Apple’s latest firmware update.

While Apple senior executive Craig Federighi discussed all the major new iOS 8 features, however, it’d have been impossible for Apple to cover all the new functionality included in the software update due to time constraint, so they either skipped some of the features or put several features into one slide during the keynote. We’ve gone ahead and tried to list almost all the major and minor new features of iOS 8 below.

iOS 8 Features List

Apple claims that it’s the innovations, and the experience that makes iOS 8 worlds most advanced operating system. Here’s a preview of some of the major iOS 8 features Apple talked about during the WWDC keynote…

iOS 8 Messages Get Better

iOS 8 lets you connect with your friends and family like never before. You can add voice, video and share your location easily through Messages.

You can easily add voice messages to a conversation. To do that tap and hold new microphone button to talk and send it with a swipe up. To can listen to the received audio messages as well. Similarly you can send video messages via Messages conversation instantly. New group messages feature allows you to take charge of the group conversation. You can easily add, drop, leave a conversation or turn on Do Not Disturb mode to avoid a flood of notifications from a single thread of conversation.

Another new feature in iOS 8 Messages app is that you can easily share your location with your friends and also see their location if they have shared it. You can configure the time for the visibility of your location. Another new feature is that you can send multiple photos and video at once. There’s no need to go through all the messages to find your sent or received photos/videos. There’s a new tab for that aggregating all your photos/videos.

Improved Spotlight in iOS 8

Spotlight in iOS 8 gets some major new features expanding the search sources beyond your device. When you run a query in iOS 8 Spotlight, it intelligently considers the context and location and then returns answers to that.

Now Spotlight gets results from Wikipedia with a picture and short summary. It also provide results from news, nearby places for a search related to restaurant or places, iTunes Store, App Store, iBooks Store, website suggestions, movie show times. Spotlight now also works in Safari.

QuickType

QuickType is one of the cool new iOS 8 features. The new keyboard is intelligent enough to offer appropriate words to complete the sentence. Word suggestions are based on the context, the person you’re talking and the style of talking. With QuickType, iOS 8 keyboard now predicts what you’ll likely be saying next, it learns your text messaging style, the way you email to people, it knows to whom you’re writing and the context of the discussion.

Interactive Notifications & design changes

iOS 8 makes it very convenient to respond to notifications. It comes with handy shortcuts to the most contacted or favorite people. The new quick reply feature in iOS 8 allows you to quickly respond to a text message without opening the Messages app.

With interactive notifications, you can now focus on what you were doing. You can respond to texts, email, Calendar notifications, reminders and messages from apps like Facebook right from their notification banners – without leaving the app you’re currently running.

3rd Party Keyboards

Apple has now opened up the keyboard to developers. Developers can now submit their keyboards for iOS 8 to the app store. Once the custom keyboards are available, users will be able to use their favorite keyboard, and choose their favorite input method or layout. Custom keyboards will be available system-wide.

Health

There are a lot of quality apps available in the app store that provides accurate data about heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol. Apple has introduced a new health feature in iOS 8, which basically provides a dashboard for all the information collected from all the health related applications. Which means all your health related information from across all the apps will be aggregated in one place.

Apple has provided developers with a new tool called Healthkit, allowing all the health and fitness related apps to work together. Apple then collects all the data from these apps and shows it in one place, means you don’t need to check all the apps. Let the apps do its work and you’ll get the results on one dashboard.

Health dashboard provides a quick overview of your most recent health and fitness related data in one place. You can also view each type of data individually. You can also show an emergency card accessible from the lock screen.

iCloud Drive

In iOS 8, Apple has introduced Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive competitor: the iCloud Drive. iCloud drive comes integrated with iOS 8 allowing you to work on any file from a device of your choice, including your Mac and PC. With this new iOS 8 feature you can store your files on iCloud Drive, edit your documents from one device and the changes will reflect across all your devices and start working on a file on one device and add the finishing touch in another.

Family Sharing

With Family Sharing features of iOS 8, you can easily share each other’s iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases. One buys a new song, movie, or app, everybody gets to share. You can also easily share family photos, a family calendar, locations, and more. Set up family sharing on your device to immediately access each other’s stuff such as music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps. The best part of this is that you can share stuff without having to share an Apple ID or passwords.

Before your children can make a purchase, they must ask your permission. A notification appears on your device. You can review the request, then approve or decline it.

Enterprise Features

iOS 8 comes with new security, productivity and device management features. In addition to Mail and third-party apps, the Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Notes, and Messages apps as well as user credentials are protected with a pass code until after the device is unlocked following a reboot. S/MIME users can choose to sign and encrypt individual messages for greater control over the security of mail messages.

New productivity feature gives you more ways to get things more more quickly and easily with apps like Mail and Calendar. Mail app also comes with a time saving feature. In iOS 8, you can see meeting availability and more in Calendar and get easier access to corporate documents.

iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Connected like never before.

With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple has taken the connectivity between devices to a whole new level. Now you can start writing an email on your iPhone and pickup where you left off when you sit down at your Mac. Browse a web on your Mac and continue from the same link from your iPhone. All you need to do is to use the same iCloud account on all your devices. This Handoff feature can be used with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts.

With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, you can answer your phone calls from your iPad and Mac as long as your devices are on the same Wi-Fi network. Same goes for text messages. call and text message notifications appear on your iPad and Mac as well from where you can respond to those calls or text messages.

We’ll update this page as we learn more about all new iOS 8 features. So, bookmark this page and come back often.